Which will last longest? Online or hard copy?
Just a real question
TT
Oh dear… what a question. Rabbit holes and cans of worms and rats nests and confusion abound.
Firstly, information is never lost. 1. However, our ability to perceive it is bound by entropy which, over time, seems to “hide” it.
But, taken at face value, and answering based on available evidence, the latter, hard copy (which is rarely “hard”).
The former may prove better, as long as…
- Someone is around to maintain it.
- Someone is around to view it.
- We don’t forget 1.
[1] black holes - Why is information indestructible? - Physics Stack Exchange
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I think it a question worth the asking.
I am become sceptical that the internet is much good at preservation long term.
The old method of paper records seems more resilient.
Of course that is for Jane, Johnny & you since paper won’t travel.
My bigger issue is, I guess, what are you (me) trying to preserve, for whom?
TT
I had a teacher 10 years ago that was adamant that paper was better than doing things on the internets or computer. He kept his administration of class attendance in a paper notebook that he brought to work every day. His reasons were that technology moves so quickly. Nobody uses floppy disks anymore and CDs were also falling out of use. Also, computers could be hacked and they break all the time. He told us he still owned notebooks he wrote on 30 years ago he still sometimes referenced. Old pen and paper never had let him down and he didn’t want or need the computer.
Until, one day on his way to work, it rained so hard he was soaked all through. Including his notebook, which was not readable anymore.
I think the moral of this story is to keep backups if you want to keep data long-term. Preferable in different ways. Paper can burn or rot away, the company managing your data in the cloud can become bankrupt, and even SSD or HD become corrupt over time. It is hard to say what continues on the longest.
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Death, taxes and pens (apologies to Douglas Adams).
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I work in aviation. Currently, a flight school, but I spent nine years in the crew records department at a large regional airline. I’m not sure how many stories I’ve heard regarding lost pilot logbooks. A professional pilot’s logbook is their career. They cannot get a certain level of certification without the required hours of flight time. At some airlines, their thousands of hours of flight time gives them additional opportunities both in instruction and/or in management.
The two most drastic stories:
- A pilot was going through a vicious divorce. His wife was so angry with him that she grabbed his boxes of pilot logbook boxes (if I recall correctly, about 20 years’ worth), took them out to the backyard and burned them.
- Another pilot kept his logbooks in the basement. I can’t recall if it was plumbing or weather, but his basement flooded and the bottom two boxes of logbooks were ruined. Naturally, they were the oldest and most difficult to recover.
Both of these pilots converted to an electronic logbook. They were delighted because it was so much easier. And, they can store copies of the data elsewhere.
Thinking in another direction, I doubt many things found on the Wayback machine (https://web.archive.org/) would still be around if it was on paper.
For that matter, scanned newspapers, periodicals, etc., has revived and preserved much that would have been either largely inaccessible or deemed too precious for the public to handle and view.
Curation is the context that counts.
Without curation, paper wins. I’ve found flash drives, CD’s, DVD’s, and tape to all be unreliable for a variety of reasons after only a few years, despite promises that the media would last a 100 years. That is, under the same storage circumstances, the paper will last longer than electronic media.
With curation, and barring an electronics dark-age (which could happen), digital wins. The ease with which copies can be made and then stored in multiple places on the planet makes it the long term winner for most average people.
So I guess the trick is to get whatever you want to save somehow connected to a foundation that will continue to do curation into the foreseeable future.
My grandparents had a cardboard box labeled “The Memory Keeper”. It held historical documents and photographs, etc–a genealogical goldmine. I inherited this box and have been digitizing the contents along with my parent’s and my own photographs, etc since 2000. Over the decades I have been migrating my genealogical data from one software package to another. During Covid, I have elected to now go with TW, because it fits my needs.
This question, you ask, is the number question of genealogists. They do not want to lose their work and they want to pass their collection down to future generations.
Other than usual preservations of old documents I have tried to make digital backups that I ask my children to store in their homes. But, I’m not doing this often enough. I have had three drives fail in the last five years. Good thing I backup my backups—twice. Yeah, it is going to be a real challenge for future generations to see my collection.
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I’ve tried a couple times to use TW. But there are so many features missing compared to using a photo album. So when I get around too it, I’ve been using DigiKam.
The problem with boxes of photos are that after awhile, no one knows who is in the photo and what they are doing. Like the photo with the note on the back, “The group of us, a week ago.” I guess the lesson is that we should all be taking time to annotate our photos however we collect them. Says the guy with the picture of a dust bin and he can’t remember why.
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Right. My auntie had a vast suitcase of photos. With copious comments on them like: “Great Uncle George in the Algarve with Mistie, 1947.” No one living knows who they were.
Here’s my great Uncle John (missing a few greats there).
History buffs might recall learning about him (or his politics) at school.
At least you know when they were.
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My grandmother had five siblings. 35+ years ago I invited them for a Sunday afternoon (and supper). I tossed the content of the boxes of documents and photos on the table and they went through them all. I got them to pencil names, dates, places, etc on the back. They would question each other on each image. They had a great time. The stories and memories they were able to share were good for them and me. It dramatically reduced the unknowns. Do it—and soon. All my parents, grandparents and great aunts and uncles are all gone.
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Very interesting! Are you Welsh?
TT
Spot-on. Clearly there is a combination of mishaps going on in ordinary life.
In an way, that was my point in the OP. Preservation of stuff long term is not a naïve trusting that the net will do it, nor it is a naïve trusting granny will get it on “documentation day”. Modern modernity moves so fast now that the recollectors tend to forget.
Very interesting detailed comment! Tx. You (genealogist, yes?) get the point about “methodology in advance”.
TBH, I think that is a central issue. The issue being both about digitisation AND “cultural concepts of time”.
Just a comment
TT
As a BTB I thought Karl Popper’s concept of World Three useful.
This is an objectified, persistent, knowledge–recorded.
Just an off-the-cuff comment
TT
Only when the light hits me in a certain way. According to my DNA, Cornish-Iberian.
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